Poker Face
by InTruth
Summary: Tony Stark pulls a slightly curved metal plate from his pocket like an abused handkerchief.


The laboratory which hosts his erstwhile prison is emphatically subterranean, but Loki knows that mere hours have passed when Stark returns, tapping his codes into the sliding glass panels spanning the enormous space. Stark holds a paper bag fading to translucence with grease, and the subtle powdery residue he leaves imprinted on the invisible access pad melts away with a hiss of steam.

He ignores the god in the corner, and Loki bares his teeth in an unseen grin.

"Jarvis," Stark says through a mouthful of pastry, "Coffee."

"Perhaps decaffeinated, sir? Your levels are already reading at-"

"Full-octane, Jarvis. And don't half-and-half me this time."

"Of course not, Mr. Stark." An edge of exasperation skates across the ambient voice.

"I'm serious."

"I wouldn't dream of it, sir."

Stark pops another small, round pastry into his mouth and slaps his hands across his thighs, turning toward a screen angled away from Loki. The chained trickster eyes the mortal for a few moments and then pins his eyes to the middle distance and resumes his musings on the optimal equation of spells by which to replace every wire in the workshop with various species of venomous snakes. Loki had contrived at least four different possibilities during the night, until Stark's arrival had interrupted his magical calculations; truly, it _writhed_ with possibility. A pity the trick must necessarily be postponed pending the readjustment of... certain circumstances.

"Donut hole?" Stark asks, loudly.

"I don't believe it would sit well with me, sir," Jarvis responds.

"Actually, I was talking to the ice queen," Stark says, glancing with every appearance of casualness to Loki. "I forget, do you god-types need to eat?"

Loki arches an eyebrow.

"Good point." Stark hoists himself onto the white surface of his worktable and cocks his head at Loki, eyes narrowed. Loki does not blink.

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

There is a pause, an assessment of opportunity on each side; Loki inclines his head in a nod.

Stark snorts. "Total asshat. But." He extends his hand to accept the cup of coffee offered by a whirring mechanical arm without taking his eyes off of his prisoner. "You have style. Well, horns aside. What's the deal with those things, anyway?"

"A very long story." _A lie._

Stark grins. "Well, as I was saying. Style is hard to find these days, especially in the Extra-Powered Human set your arrival has introduced me to." He takes a pull from the coffee cup; his eyes widen and he swallows painfully. "_Dammit_, Jarvis!"

"Ms. Potts's orders, sir," the voice murmurs, approximating apologetic quite well, in Loki's opinion. He has extensive experience in approximating apologetic.

"Make a note: Program Pepper-override code at earliest convenience."

"Yes, sir. Good luck, sir."

Stark sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. Loki leans ever so slightly forward and studies him with the lightest coloring of caution; just a man, of course, but unfortunately not one to be safely underestimated.

_Well. Not again._

"So: Style. An underestimated quality, a lot of the time." Tony Stark pulls a slightly curved metal plate from his pocket like an abused handkerchief. It is stained with oil and spotted with rust, divided into ominously exact sections, but otherwise as dull and indistinct as the void space between the Nine Realms.

In spite of himself, Loki blinks.

"But the thing with style," Stark says, quietly, "It's like a secret. It's a bubble. There, until it's not. And every so often, someone comes along and pops that thing right open- they spill out everything inside and run their hands through it all. They study it. They touch your suits and finger your attitude and analyze the soles of your shoes, until they know everything there is to know about you and everything you think you are... every tiny lie you cram up in that bubble of _style_." He slips down from the worktable and moves, slowly, toward Loki on his manacled perch.

Loki licks his lips. "Style, as you speak of it, means little when one has beheld the ancient secrets-"

"Really," Stark says, softly. "Then how come I'm standing here, and you're sitting there?" Stark glances down at the metal piece in his hands, turns it over. Meets Loki's eyes.

"We've pawed all over everything you've got. Everything you _had_. There is nothing left for you to hide, and nowhere in the universe-" a grin ghosts over Stark's lips- "Literally, nowhere in the _universe_ for you to hide it."

"I think you underestimate my capacity for secrecy."

"I agree, actually," says Stark, instantly, unnervingly businesslike. "Which is why we've settled on this. Temporary solution though it is." He dangles the metal muzzle before Loki's eyes; it sways slightly from his fingers, pieces clinking with a sound both heavy and uncannily soft.

Loki watches it swing.

"A pointless gesture, surely you understand," he says lightly. "My words are the merest shade of my strength." _Another lie_.

"Yeah, maybe." Stark tosses back the contents of the coffee cup, swallowing with obscene deliberation. "But, and no offense, your voice really gets on my nerves."

He presses an invisible latch set within the metal, and the thing curls open like some perverted flower. Tony Stark starts to whistle.

Loki hisses, disdain curling from his lips like smoke. "What," he whispers, "_Precisely_-"

"Poker Face. Don't know Lady Gaga? Huh, I thought she was one of your-"

"Is that really the best you can do, Stark?"

Stark crosses his arms, affronted. "She won _all_ the Grammys."

"A dirty scrap of metal? To contain my magic?" Loki laughs, cold and venomous, a viper slicing through the grasslands of Tony Stark's imagination. "Do you think I will allow such a worthless thing to stifle-"

"Don't worry, the straps are adjustable," the inventor says. And with insultingly casual ease, he presses the segmented plate against Loki's lips.

The metal is oddly warm.

Steel melts between Loki's teeth, cradling his tongue and settling instantly solid.

A dry _sucking_, an almost hydraulic hiss, an angry and painfully definitive_click_...

"Take your secrets back to whatever planet you came from," Stark says, quietly. "Just keep them the hell off of my world." The words drip like icemelt through the pauses in Loki's pulse. Stark swivels away and strides across the laboratory, stepping inside a gleaming lift, arms crossed. Loki's lips tremble in a silent, painful snarl against his second unanticipated prison. Stark watches his reflection in the mirrored panel of the lift, rippling slightly as the gears engage; Loki locks on the man's eyes, swearing inaudible oaths which Tony Stark is infinitely too human to understand.

The doors of the lift whisper closed, but the drifting notes of a whistled tune settle in Loki's ears as the taste of burnt metal blooms darkly on his tongue.


End file.
